Philosophy Smackdown

Douglas Edwards

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781509537679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

From its carnival origins to its current status as a global phenomenon, pro wrestling has a unique presence in popular culture. Part sport and part theatre, the impressive antics of its larger-than-life characters have captured the imaginations of generations of fans, and prompted endless speculation about behind-the-scenes machinations. Philosophy Smackdown is a study of pro wrestling as distinctive as pro wrestling itself: it is the first philosophical look at this major cultural spectacle. Philosopher and fan Douglas Edwards takes both philosophy and pro wrestling to parts unknown. With liveliness, humor and insight, he shows that pro wrestling is fertile ground for reflection on fundamental human issues, such as reality, freedom, identity, morality, justice, and meaning. He explores these through pivotal events in pro wrestling, from the eighties heyday of Hulkamania to the recent emergence of AEW. Philosophy Smackdown is a read that will delight philosophers and pro wrestling fans alike.It's time to askyourself: Whatcha gonna do when Philosophy Smackdown runs wild on you?

1
Reality: Work vs Shoot

The distinction between appearance and reality is something you learn early on as a pro wrestling fan. As a kid, you believe it’s real: you believe that they are really fighting, really competing to win the match. You talk with your friends about who can beat up who, and point to wrestling matches as evidence – “of course Warrior can beat up Hogan, didn’t you see WrestleMania VI?”. Then, gradually, you start to question things. Older kids tell you that it’s “fake”. You watch the matches more carefully, and start to wonder how it is that the wrestlers pull off all these feats of strength and athleticism. In cage matches you start to wonder why they don’t climb that little bit faster, or run out the door with a little more commitment.

When I was a kid there wasn’t the wealth of information about the workings of pro wrestling that we have now. There were no documentaries telling all (let alone podcasts), no extensive internet discussions, and no social media accounts which told the wrestlers’ real life stories, and how they differed from their in-ring lives. The discovery of the reality behind wrestling was a gradual process, that came in dribs and drabs.

One might think that finding out what’s really going on would dampen one’s enthusiasm for pro wrestling, but what I found instead though was that the more I saw through the appearances, the more interesting it became. This aspect of pro wrestling plays a large role in explaining the fanaticism associated with it, and in this chapter we’ll be exploring this fascinating aspect of pro wrestling fandom, and what it can tell us about reality, and ourselves.

1. Three Layers of Reality in Pro Wrestling

When watching an amateur wrestling match, one sees two athletes competing for physical supremacy. They do so by performing various holds and throws, and obey a set of rules that govern the activity. The aim is to pin your opponent’s shoulders to the mat for a short time (around a second). A referee checks that the rules are being followed, and declares a winner after a pinfall has been counted.

When watching a pro wrestling match, the same sort of thing seems to be going on. Wrestlers grapple each other and use throws and slams to get their opponent down to the mat, ultimately aiming to pin them. The main differences on the face of it are that pro wrestling matches can involve more than two wrestlers; that pinfalls are counts to three seconds, as opposed to one; and that you can also win by submission. Aside from that, similar holds and throws are used, a set of rules is there to be followed, and a referee is there to check that they are enforced, and to raise the hand of the winner.

Looking closely, though, we see that things are not quite as they seem. The moves tend to be a lot more acrobatic than the moves in amateur wrestling. Some moves seem impossible to pull off, and perhaps are, unless there is some cooperation involved. The wrestlers tend also to be a lot more flamboyant both in dress and demeanor. They interact with each other, and the crowd, in ways one does not find amateur wrestlers acting. They have characters, stories behind those characters, feuds with specific opponents who often interfere in their matches, and referees often are attacked or injured inadvertently. To put it in a word, there is a lot more pageantry than one finds in amateur wrestling.

The reason for this, of course, is that pro wrestling is not to amateur wrestling what professional soccer is to amateur soccer, i.e. a more regulated and intense version of the same activity; rather, it is a totally different beast. In pro wrestling matches, the wrestlers work together to put on a match, as opposed to work against each other to try to win the match. Indeed, rather than try to beat their opponent, a good pro wrestler aims to make their opponent look as good as possible. Instead of the match being a genuine contest between two athletes, it is a story told by two athletes, who cooperate, either beforehand, on the fly during the match, or both. The story told is determined by the writers, bookers, or promoters who run the shows, and dictate the characters of the wrestlers involved. The intention is to captivate the audience, thrill them with the athletic display of the match, and draw them in emotionally with the story told by the characters involved.

One key difference between amateur and pro wrestling, then, is that there is a distinction between appearance and reality in pro wrestling that there isn’t in amateur wrestling. What appears to be a contest, is in reality a performance. It is this distinction that we’ll focus on here.

Before we do, let’s talk briefly about the f-word: isn’t pro wrestling “fake”, whereas amateur wrestling is “real”? There’s a reason many wrestling fans refer to “fake” as the “f-word”, and it’s not just because it begins with “f”. It’s also because it’s taboo. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what pro wrestling is, and why people appreciate it. Now, there’s no doubt that what you see in the ring is not quite “real”, in the sense that the performers are putting on a show, which they jointly present, as opposed to being engaged in genuine competition to win the match. But to say that it’s fake is to mischaracterize the activity in a way that unnecessarily denigrates the performers and the complexity of the activity. Would we call movies “fake”, and actors in movies “fakers”? If not, then we shouldn’t call pro wrestling “fake”, or pro wrestlers “fakers” (more on this later). Instead, we should think about pro wrestling in terms of the distinction between appearance and reality, which allows us to get to the interesting issues in a more direct and accurate way.

Borrowing some ideas from the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, let’s develop this by looking at three layers of reality in pro wrestling: appearance, reality behind the appearance, and true reality, which will also help us to understand the different ways that fans engage with it. These three layers are illustrated in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, from his work The Republic (see figure 1).

Plato imagines some prisoners trapped in an underground cave, tied down so they are forced to look only in one direction. Shadows are cast on the wall in front of them, which are the only things that they can see. They cannot see the fire behind them, nor the things held up to the fire that cause the shadows. As they can only see the shadows, and have no reason to think there is anything beyond them, the prisoners think that they are seeing real things, whereas we can see that they only see shadows.

Figure 1. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

In Plato’s model, we have three layers of reality. We have the shadows on the wall, which represent how things are appearing to the prisoners in the cave. We can call this reality level 1, appearance, as it is the way things appear to be to the prisoners. Next we have the movements of the things casting the shadows. This is more real than the shadows, as the appearance of the shadows is dependent upon the movement of the things, so we can call this reality level 2, reality behind the appearance. Finally, there is an additional layer of reality which is independent of both of these levels: the ultimate reality that is found outside the cave itself. We can call this reality level 3, true reality.

The pro wrestling version of Plato’s Cave can be represented as shown in figure 2.

Let’s start with the fans. The action as it’s presented in the ring is what the audience is intended to see, and is the show taken at face value. This is reality level 1. It’s this level of reality that the term “kayfabe” refers to, and when people talk about “keeping kayfabe”, they’re talking about the need to preserve the appearances. To do this, pro wrestlers used to keep in character outside of shows, and wrestlers feuding with one another on screen weren’t allowed to be seen in public together.

Next, we have the first layer behind the appearance of the match as presented, which is the work of the wrestlers in the ring. According to appearances, we have people who are hurting each other with elaborate moves, and who are engaged in a contest. As we know, though, things are not as they seem, as the wrestlers are not engaged in a contest to win the match, and the moves they are performing are not performed in order to hurt each other (indeed, if performed well, they should not hurt to the extent they are portrayed to). The wrestlers themselves, and the way they jointly perform the match, project an image of what is happening, namely a genuine athletic contest with genuine intent to harm, which is not what is really happening. This is reality level 2. Interest in this level of reality will involve questions like “how did they do that?”, when considering how a particular move is pulled off. To find out more about this, you might go to a wrestling school.

Figure 2. Plato’s Allegory applied to Pro Wrestling

Finally, we have reality level 3, which is the reality ultimately responsible for the other layers. In pro wrestling, this is the realm of the bookers and promoters who write the storylines, and determine the outcomes of the matches. This comes about as we can ask the question of why the performers are doing what they’re doing at level 2, and why they’re subsequently portraying the appearances at level 1. In pro wrestling, it’s typically because each match showcases not only the wrestlers’ athletic ability, but also their skill as actors telling a particular story. The story is written by the bookers, and they will give guidance to the performers which enables them to act the story out in a cohesive way.

The realm of the bookers is thus the “ultimate reality” of pro wrestling. When we ask why certain things happened, we typically hit bedrock when we consider the decisions of those booking the matches and the shows. This is the way to “escape the cave”, using the analogy above, as it is to uncover true reality. This mirrors the purpose of Plato’s original allegory of the cave, which was to illustrate the difficulties we human beings have in knowing things about the world around us. For Plato, in our everyday lives we are like the prisoners, only having access to the evidence of our senses, which we cannot break away from. The experience we have is of objects in the world that present themselves to us in certain ways, but we can never see the things themselves, just our individual perceptions of them. We also have no idea what reality is fundamentally like; what the origins of these things are.

The philosopher’s quest, for Plato, is to escape the cave, and the bounds of our senses, by attaining knowledge of true reality through rational inquiry. Likewise, the pro wrestling fan’s quest is to escape the cave by getting knowledge of the true reality of the backstage decisions behind the shows as presented. Let’s now examine more closely the relationships between these levels of reality.

2. Reality Intrusions

Some of the most thrilling moments for wrestling fans are the moments when the reality behind the appearances breaks through, giving the viewer a glimpse of the real world behind the show. These moments, called “shoots”, are not part of the show; they are times when something unplanned happens, or something happens that at least one of the performers is unaware of. Perhaps the most infamous moment of this kind in contemporary wrestling history is the “Montreal Screwjob”, which had a major role in changing the way pro wrestling was perceived by both performers and fans.

The essentials of the story are as follows. It is the WWF in 1997. Since the rise of WCW, the WWF is facing serious competition for the first time in a while. The WWF champion is Bret “Hitman” Hart, a WWF mainstay since the late 1980s. From the legendary Hart wrestling family in Calgary, Hart is an exceptional technical wrestler, wearing distinctive pink and black ring attire. He is a former two-time Tag Team Champion, two-time Intercontinental Champion, King of the Ring Winner, and five-time WWF Champion, and has been involved in some of the most memorable matches in the company’s history. Hart started as part of the heel tag team “the Hart Foundation”, with his brother-in-law Jim “the Anvil” Neidhart. Gradually, the Hart Foundation turned babyface, and Hart set out on a singles career. He won the Intercontinental Championship, followed by the WWF Championship, and was a classic babyface: a loyal, never-say-die underdog, who was a clear fan favorite.

However, during his feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin i...